What You Say: Tropes, Ideas & POVs

“It’s been done before…”

This is the lie from Writing Hell at least one of writer has believed. Those vicious imps of self-doubt that paralyze writers, cripple our confidence and whisper from behind our consciousness that we can’t possibly want to write about that! The tropes that are overdone, have not been done by you!

Tropes are there for archetypes of a specific genre or literary character type. They exist to be played with, revamped, recreated–they are not fixed. The ideas you venture to write, your characters, they all need to be expressed. Don’t worry about if it has been done before. It has not been done by you.

Write the story. Make the characters as you will. Stretch the tropes, turn the protagonist on its head. Stretch the plot. You may have a vampire story. Don’t worry about Anne Rice or Laurel K. Hamilton–you are the writer. Don’t worry about a horror story akin to Get Out, and My Soul To Take, you write the story you want.

As a writer, you determine the voice, the plot and the character, even the trope. You control everything. You determine everything. Don’t listen to the imps. Don’t listen to the voices that remind you of what other people have done. The crux of writing is there may be someone whom may have a similar idea but a unique perspective. That is what makes this profession so frustrating and amazing.

Write, dear one. Write. Don’t be dismayed if you have a similar idea, you have a unique respective. So, write it.